AUSTIN — Voting rights groups and disability advocates descended on the Capitol on Wednesday to oppose a bill they say would have a chilling effect on voting and voter registration efforts.

Senate Bill 9 by Sen. Bryan Hughes, R-Mineola, would increase criminal penalties for providing false information on a voter registration application, increase the investigative powers of law enforcement over elections and require those assisting voters to fill out more detailed forms on how they are helping.

The combination of proposals, voting rights advocates say, will scare away volunteers who help at voter registration drives or assist people with disabilities or the elderly cast a ballot because they won’t want to risk having a crime attached to their name.

“SB 9 would make voting harder, scarier and more confusing for voters while at the same time imposing new red tape and unnecessary bureaucracy on our county election officials,” said James Slattery, a lawyer with the Texas Civil Rights Project.

The bill was left pending on Wednesday. But on Friday, one day before the deadline to set bills on the House calendar, the House Elections Committee voted the bill out on a party-line 5-4 vote.

Democrats said the bill, which has until Tuesday to receive approval from the House, would open up a "myriad of possible criminal prosecutions against voters and poll workers while doing nothing to fix problems voters actually face."

"House Democrats are disappointed at the party-line passage of the bill in the Elections Committee, but we will keep fighting to stop this bill," said Rep. Phillip Cortez, the Democratic vice chairman of the committee. "When Texans with disabilities, voters young and old, non-English speaking citizens, people of color, and members of both parties stand together against a piece of legislation, that's a tell-tale sign of a very, very bad bill."

For years, Republican state leaders have focused on tightening voting requirements to prevent what they say is a widespread voter fraud problem in the state. Democrats and voting rights organizations characterize those efforts as overzealous attempts to root out minor problems that end up infringing on the voting rights of many Texans, often minorities and younger voters.

Rep. Stephanie Klick, R-Fort Worth, who is shepherding the bill through the House, said many of the criticisms were based on the Senate version of the bill, which she amended before the hearing in front of the House Elections Committee on Wednesday. The committee was expected to debate the bill late into the evening.

“The intent of this committee substitute is neither voter suppression nor to enable voter fraud,” she said. “Ultimately, the intent of SB 9 is to strengthen election integrity and to make sure all votes cast are legitimate votes and no legal voter is inhibited from casting their ballot.”

But opponents decried a decision by the committee, which is led by Klick, to end registration for witnesses seeking to testify on the bill within 30 minutes of the beginning of the hearing. They said many people had traveled from all over the state to testify.

Advocates for people with disabilities said Klick was receptive to their concerns and offered changes to the bill that eased some of their worries, but not all.

Under one part of the bill, the penalty for “unlawfully assisting” a voter would be increased from a Class A misdemeanor, which could lead to a year in jail, to a state jail felony and up to a two-year sentence.

“Our concern is, if you assist me and you were assisting me in a way that looked funny to a poll watcher, it could be misunderstood that you were providing me answers,” said Molly Broadway, with Texans for Disability Rights.

Advocates said another part of the bill could make it difficult for assisted living centers to offer their residents the chance to vote. That provision would require people who drive at least three non-family members to the polls for curbside voting to sign a form listing their name, address and why they are providing assistance.

Workers at assisted living centers could refuse to take people with disabilities to the polls for fear of ending up as part of an election investigation, advocates said.

“This bill in general sends some generic chilling messages about people who need assistance" to vote, said Bob Kafka, a member of Rev Up, which focuses on helping people with disabilities vote.

Klick said her change to the bill specifies that only people helping a person “curbside vote” would be subject to that requirement. But the other measures are meant to ensure that a voter assistant is not unduly influencing a person’s vote.

Voting rights groups also said the bill would increase penalties for people who make “honest mistakes” on their voter registration applications. Currently, providing false information on an application is a Class B misdemeanor, punishable by up to six months in jail. The bill would increase that penalty to a state jail felony.

Organizations who help people register to vote say such an increase would make their jobs tougher.

“We already have a tough time registering people to vote because of all the things we have to do. We can already get in trouble if they mess up or we mess up,” said Ric Galvan, the president of the student chapter of Texas Rising at the University of Texas. “This will only make it worse. If SB 9 were to be implemented, that would put that person at risk to go to jail, at risk of have fines against them. College students don’t want to have that.”